


cities & endings

by adreamaloud, daneorange (adreamaloud)



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 02:22:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/adreamaloud, https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/daneorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love. alex and piper, books and endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cities & endings

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Расставания и города](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8595871) by [wakeupinlondon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wakeupinlondon/pseuds/wakeupinlondon)



> spoilers through the end of season 1. i have taken a lot of liberties. all errors are mine.

_and the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love  
_ _–bastille, “pompeii”_  

When it ends, Alex knows -- it's been ending for quite a while. If there's a handful of things she's learned from all the girls that came before Piper, it is this: Things don't just _end_  -- they _start_  ending, somewhere.

It's the smallest things that add up -- missed rendezvous and dropped promises, a forgotten dinner or two. Alex remembers Piper's discontent quite clearly -- it tasted like the tangy iron taste of blood from a split lip.

Alex remembers first seeing traces of it while they were on holiday in Prague -- pleasure unfortunately interrupted by business. That time, Piper had smiled, but Alex wasn't blind enough not to see through _that._

It had been the beginning; it had been the end.

*

When the fight about Istanbul explodes, Alex is too busy to see it coming. They've been holed up for days, and Alex hasn't taken her eyes off her computer screen for _weeks_.

Piper is there, and then, she isn't; in the days prior, she'd taken to going out to book stores alone. She comes back right before dinner and puts a new book on Alex's shelf.

Alex doesn't discover this until Piper's gone.

*

At the end of it, Piper's left a curious set of books, including a massive paperback version of Atwood's "The Blind Assassin." Alex takes it with her through eight countries, and it almost feels like having Piper with her, only not really.

She reads it slowly and sticks with it for a year before leaving it in a small room in Aarhus.

*

In the days after they bury her mother, Alex goes from mule to mule, looking for Piper. All of the girls after are blonde, yet none of them turns out to be her, of course -- Piper is _different,_ and it's infuriating, how anybody could be so _irreplaceable_.

By the time word reaches Alex that Piper is alive and well somewhere, being happy and _suburban_ with some laid-back dude that her best friend must have introduced her to, Alex has already lost count of the months.

So much of it had been spent catching up -- she'd fallen behind when she took time out to grieve. _Grief,_ she'd just thought while updating her spreadsheets. _What a damn right fucker._

Business is good when she gets caught; at the time, it is an almost too-welcome thing.

 *

Alex spends her first few days in prison staring at her walls, thinking about Piper’s books and dreaming about _their_ cities, etching with her eyes ghosts of buildings and parapets on the blank concrete.

She remembers taking Piper to the airport once, in the early days: “Pick a city, any city,” Alex had said, and two hours later they found themselves on a flight to Copenhagen. At the time, Piper had only a change of clothes, so Alex took her shopping in Stroget before they went drinking on Nyhavn, lights twinkling on the water. She remembers Piper’s dog-eared Didion, and the sun setting so late. It was summer, yet the skies were overcast and in the afternoon, it drizzled. Alex remembers having a rather good time.

Looking out their hotel room window that night, Piper asked her if it was going to be this unpredictable forever. Alex got a room right in the middle of the city and their window opened to a view of the wide highway. Wind blew so hard, she could hear it against the window pane, if she wanted.

“So, is it?” Piper turned to her, her figure a silhouette in the dim light.

“Is it what?”

“Going to be complicated and irregular and unpredictable forever.”

Alex put her book down and beckoned Piper to come closer. “Let me show you a couple of things I know about this forever you’re talking about,” was all she said.

*

Her books arrive the following week, and she finds Piper’s worn copy of _Slouching Towards Bethlehem_ at the bottom of the box. Alex couldn’t believe she still had it; she never thought Piper would leave it behind. Alex remembers the day Piper had pulled it out of the bargain bin, the cover creased and faded. Piper loved that book to pieces, and Alex loved riling her up by dismissing the thing as a Christmas compilation.

“Do you even have any fucking idea who this woman is?” was Piper’s indignant answer. Indeed, if there was anything Alex really loved fiercely about Piper, it was her temper.

When she finishes unpacking the box, Alex picks the book back up and turns the page to the last essay, where Alex finds Didion saying goodbye to New York and looking for Babylon.

She doesn’t mean to cry, but she does.

*

Soon the ceiling is already an imaginary map littered with red dotted lines and pushpins. _We were here and here and here._ When Alex closes her eyes, she sees the desk in that Beirut hotel and Piper reading on the bed, restless; that weekend in Bonn that Piper preferred to spend in movie houses, alone.

On bad nights though, Alex goes back to that balcony in Hyderabad. It was New Year’s Eve and she was drinking wine while waiting for emails and phone calls, and Piper had walked out on her. It wasn’t the first, and it wasn’t about to be the last.

Somewhere, Alex knew, a clock was ticking. It was only a matter of time.

*

When she sees Piper for the first time in prison, Alex recognizes the look she has on – it is similar to that time she watched Piper from afar in an airport in Indonesia. She seemed so lost, up until the moment Alex came up to her and told her it was going to be all right.

_This girl._ In that moment it all comes back to Alex, that feeling – like it could be home, if she wanted.

Alex blinks and looks away. This girl right here isn’t that Piper anymore – that Piper has ended, this much she knows. Alex goes back to her bunk and stares at the non-maps covering her walls, counting the miles to Babylon and back, instead. #

**Author's Note:**

> With references to Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That.”


End file.
